Fragments of Home: Refugee Housing and the Politics of Shelter
Abandoned airports. Shipping containers. Squatted hotels. These are just three of the many unusual places that have housed refugees in the past decade. The story of international migration is often told through personal odysseys and dangerous journeys, but when people arrive at their destinations a more mundane task begins: refugees need a place to stay. Governments and charities have adopted a range of strategies in response to this need. Some have sequestered refugees in massive camps of glinting metal. Others have hosted them in renovated office blocks and disused warehouses. They often end up in prefabricated shelters flown in from abroad.
This book focuses on seven examples of emergency shelter, from Germany to Jordan, which emerged after the great "summer of migration" in 2015. Drawing on detailed ethnographic research into these shelters, the book reflects on their political implications and opens up much bigger questions about humanitarian action. By exploring how aid agencies and architects approached this basic human need, Tom Scott-Smith demonstrates how shelter has many elements that are hard to reconcile or combine; shelter is always partial and incomplete, producing mere fragments of home. Ultimately, he argues that current approaches to emergency shelter have led to destructive forms of paternalism and concludes that the principle of autonomy can offer a more fruitful approach to sensitive and inclusive housing.
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"A brilliant, expansive, and original book about the nature of humanitarian shelter. Bringing together beautifully written ethnographic accounts of refugee shelter from France and Greece to Lebanon and Germany, this book is an unparalleled account of how to address basic human need. Even in times of emergency, not all shelter is equal; Scott-Smith takes emotion, dignity, aesthetics and politics seriously, and courageously argues for the principle of autonomy as the most important factor in creating a home. A must-read for those who want to both understand and improve today's world."--Miriam Ticktin, CUNY Graduate Center
"Beautifully written and based on meticulous ethnographic fieldwork, Fragments of Home is a must-read for anyone interested in humanitarianism. Through engaging case studies, the book offers an urgent and compelling critique of the often patriarchal design and delivery of basic shelter. Yet it is also solutions-oriented and practical, revealing that better outcomes are possible with greater respect for autonomy, and by offering displaced people greater control, even over seemingly simple design choices."--Alexander Betts, University of Oxford
